This Is What Depression Looks Like Because It Isn’t Just Tear-Stained Pillows And A Lost Appetite

My depression was not the tears that burned my skin as they fell from my exhausted eyes. My depression was not the food I didn’t eat or the errands I didn’t run. It wasn’t the nights I spent in bed not being able to sleep. That was not my depression.

My depression was not a man introducing himself to the people around me whispering need as they shook his hand. It was not a dark heavy cloud hovering above my head threatening to rain every time I spoke or was spoken to.

My depression was not a sad feeling or a miserable one. My depression was a lack of feeling all together.

My depression was silent.

My depression was me spacing out in the middle of a crowd because everything would go silent and I would hear nothing but the sound of my own breath. The sound of oxygen rustling its way through my throat and into my lungs and then out again and again in. And it would be an hour before I come back to my surroundings.

My depression was a world around me moving in slow motion and thoughts in my head disappearing, leaving me in a void unable to perform a simple interaction. My depression was my reflection staring back at itself, paralyzed.

My depression sat with me in a bathtub for 4 hours until my skin burned from wilting and only then did I realize, it had been that long. My depression took me to places with no features, places that weren’t really places, left me there to find my way back.

My depression was not the inability to sleep; it was the inability to wake up. The unwillingness to open my eyes to my reality. My depression was a numb needing for an escape but knowing that was not an option. Knowing reality stays and so do we.

My depression was a loss of desire; desire turned into duty. It was the slow drowned passion shackled at the ankles, surrendering to the weigh down. It was not unread messages; it was messages left on read. Phone not on silent but calls ignored. It was my reluctance to speak back when I was spoken to.

Indifference.

My depression was not a cry for help; it was just a silent begging to be explained. A blank existence waiting to be understood, waiting to make a point.

My depression was not the sadness they reenact in movies, it didn’t give me reason to slit a wrist or swallow 13 pills, it wasn’t sad at all actually, it was nothing.

My depression looked like nothing. Felt like nothing.

It was nothing.

And there isn’t really a way to explain or understand nothing.